I went downstairs to look for a power cord this evening...and found a little treasure.

It's the enclosure from a 40W car amp, and it has two separate heatsinks that are larger than the one on the booster I picked up last weekend. They measure 5.5" x 2.25" and 3/8" thick with thirteen 1" tall fins! They form the sides of the enclosure. I am thinking of using that enclosure to house the amp, replacing the flat top cover with 1/4" plexiglass left over from my computer case project. I'll find another enclosure for the PS.

I'll also make capacitor holders out of plexiglass as well, inspired by Peter Daniel's phenolic blocks. I was thinking of drilling CD's for that purpose, but CD's are too flimsy. Two pieces of 1/4" plexi attached to make a 1/2" plate should do nicely.

Hey check this! I came up with an idea this evening as I was reading some threads about transformer selection. My 25-0-25 tranny has dual primaries. There were some concerns about excessive heat. So it hit me -- I should install a switch to either run the primaries in series or in parallel, depending on my mood. Running them in series will cut the supply voltage in half, effectively making it a 12.5-0-12.5. I will call this "peaceful audiophile mode", and the other setting "loud furnace mode"!
I'll post some photos of my amp parts tomorrow.

Well I finally did it...I completed my gainclone! Sorry it took so long for an update -- been too busy to work on it the last several months. I finally decided to sit down and finish it last night.

The case isn't as pretty as I had hoped -- the power supply is in a PC power supply enclosure, and the amp is in a car amp enclosure. They don't match...but it sounds pretty good!

I was disappointed with my first test, which was listening to an Internet radio station. The music that sounded pretty decent through my PC speakers sounded like crap on my Polks.

But then I hooked up my turntable, and laid down some vinyl, and it sounded every bit as good as the blown Technics receiver that it's replacing.

There was some concern about heat due to my use of a 25-0-25 tranny, so I put in a DPDT switch to switch the dual primaries between series and parallel. This allows me to cut the power supply voltage in half if necessary.

It sounds great in either position at low levels, but it clips if I want to push it while on the low setting. I need to run it in the full voltage mode to get louder volume out of it.

On the full voltage setting the heatsinks get warm, but not hot under normal listening conditions. If I crank it to high levels, then they get hot. This won't be a problem though, as I never listen at those levels anyway.

So far so good! I'll post pictures once I figure out how to make my CompactFlash reader work under Linux.

Congrats, and welcome to the GC family. What do you have planned next?

I finished my GC last year, and i'm fairly satisfied. Made a few mistakes that are correctable, but I'm short for time/money.
Next up (VERY soon .. month or so and i start sourcing the parts) is a valve buffered igc ..

The only parts I have so far are the chips, but that'll change soon enough. Then I'll get a nice case built for it (the front panel will probably be made by some company that a forum member posted a couple days ago .. nifty tool they have!), and then we'll see how it compares!

Btw, where in south-eastern MB are you? Brandon? Portage?
I'm in winnipeg myself, good to see local interest

I remember you elizard -- you were tossing around the idea of of building a super-compact water-cooled GC last year, right?

I live a few miles out of Landmark, Manitoba. If you're looking at a map, it is about mid-point between Winnipeg and Steinbach. I grew up in Winnipeg, and still work there.

I was going to convert my blown Technics receiver into a pre-amp to go with my GC, but I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to get around to that.

My next project will probably be fixing the switching power supply in a JVC vcr I picked up at a garage sale for 5 bucks. Hopefully I can track down the problem with my oscilloscope. This vcr is much nicer than my current one if it weren't for the fact that it doesn't turn on!

Eh south-EASTERN (not western, i always get east and west mixed up for some reason) .. yeah, I know where landmark is ..

It wasn't me who thought of the water cooled GC .. at least i don't think, now that i think about it i don't THINK it was me, but it could have been me .. hmm .. oh well

But that's awesome, you rarely see people from winnipeg on here (i think there are 1 or 2 active ones), so its good to see local interest as i said.

Btw, I finished gathering up almost all the parts on digikey (making an order) for the VBIGC, except for the 3 caps. Now I gotta wait a little to get money (about a month) and then the orders are gonna start coming in, and it'll start taking shape

I was wondering if the Technics project has come to fruitation yet?
I had the same thing happen to me (right side as well) and was looking into doing the same project and ran into yours.are these as acurate as the original amp in there. and am I missing any thing or are we looking at 30 watts @ 24v and 40watts at 36v?. also how about the preamp wires into the SVI 3206 D. have you figured out that pinout. so many questions from the noob. thanks for any help.